Hello. I would like understood why the immaculate conception dogma was formulate.

Actually in the sacred scriptures one can not to find something like that. And, even if there were popular beliefs in that sense, for many siecles Roma didn't approved it as dogma. Also very important saints and theologians as Saint Bernard, who is not suspected of heresy, refuted it.

But by XIX century something new happen: the girl Catherina Laboure had a Virgin Mary vision. In that vision the Virgin herself shows to the girl a patron for to make a medal which contained a pray confirming this dogma. Some years after that, as the medal was made and seem to be very miraculous, the dogma was approved.

Is an individual vision enought to establish a dogma? perhaps other considerations were involved .. which? Someone can teach me about it, or tell me where can I study the topic?

Thank you very much.(Warning: I am not denying the dogma, just trying to understand how it was established)

Lev Gillet born in a Roman Catholic family but finally he embraced the Orthodox Church. As I can see he had a balanced point of view on this topic.

He doens't explain how the dogma was established (which was my original question) but I found something interesting: from Gillet understanding there isn't and insoluble contradiction between Romans and Orthodox if we are willing to find the common points about it along the both traditions.

It is a theological speculation elevated to dogma, a "theologumenon" (theological opinion), based on a reasoning that turns a hypothesis into truth: "If [God] could do it... he did it" The foundation of this argument would be the "exaggeration" of God's grace, which would always be super-abundant, and would always exhaust all possibilities. His author has been the "Doctor Subtilis", Duns Scotus, a medieval theologian from Scholasticism - a very peculiar philosophical-theological stream, as you may know.

The millennial tradition of the undivided Western-Eastern Church (from the first millennium - and even from a big part of the western second millenial tradition) recognizes this possibility as ... mere possibility, mere theological reflection or mere devotional-affective truth of free adherence. In fact, St. Gregory Palamas, the bastion of (Eastern) Orthodoxy, freely defended it, and in a very particular way.

But the assumptions of the idea of ​​the Immaculate Conception seem to carry complicated biases in relation to anthropology and sin (to the themes of freedom and humanity). And the fact that it has been "dogmatized" brings very serious consequences for ecumenical dialogue and any chance of re-union of the Churches.

You can read more about the origin of the dogma in Theology Manuals or Dictionaries, in a more western or more ecumenical view, depending on the book.

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